When JetBlue came out with their anniversary promotion in mid-2025, I was interested right away. Fly to 15, 20, or 25 unique JetBlue airports and get a ton of miles, and 25 years of status? At the time, we already had travel plans that would net about 8-10 destinations without much effort. We live in New York and regularly travel to Florida and Puerto Rico, which are all locations well-served by JetBlue. Could we make a run at it?
In the end, I reached 25 unique JetBlue destinations and was awarded 350,000 JetBlue TrueBlue Points and 25 years of Mosaic 1 status. My wife reached 20 JetBlue destinations, and was awarded 350,000 JetBlue TrueBlue Points. Here’s a summary of this very fun, very rewarding adventure.
Our JetBlue 25 for 25 results
I flew 36 flights to reach 25 unique airports. I spent 479,923 points to take these flights and another $391.60 in taxes and fees. Due to a $384 refund received later from the one cancellation we had, this cash component was reduced to $6.67.
My wife, (an absolute trooper!) flew 27 flights to reach 20 unique airports. This cost 404,980 points and $363.60 in taxes and fees. After the $384 refund, this means she earned $21.33.
Combined, we spent 884,902 points and earned $14.66. We earned a combined 700,000 JetBlue points and Mosaic 1 status for Brett until January 31, 2051.
Unlocking massive value
I averaged 19,197 points for each qualifying destination, and my wife averaged 20,249. **It bears pointing out that** within these totals are two round trip flights (four segments) to Dublin on JetBlue Mint (business class). Those flights averaged a much higher 65,000 miles for each segment, which skews the average a bit. Since Ireland was a previously scheduled trip that wasn’t influenced by this promotion, if you adjust that destination down to the average of 20k per destination, our point expenditure goes from 884,902 down to 701,000: almost exactly equaling the 700,000 we were awarded. So we essentially paid upfront for 63 flights, and were reimbursed all those points after, as well as had a slight profit on the taxes/fees due to the refund! I didn’t know it would shake out this way going in. What massive value!
Additionally, we spent another 69,000 points on hotels at some overnight stays in Nassau, Raleigh-Durham, Providence, and Washington DC. (Grand Hyatt Baha-Mar, Hyatt Place RDU, Hyatt Place PVD, and Hyatt Regency Crystal City).
The points came from AMEX via AMEX Travel, JetBlue TrueBlue Points themselves, and Citi ThankYou Points transferred to JetBlue. I had selected JetBlue as my chosen airline for an AMEX Business Platinum to earn 35% off any point bookings through AMEX, and as a holder of the Barclays JetBlue Plus credit card, earned 10% off points bookings made directly with JetBlue. The breakout is below.
- AMEX – 509k
- JetBlue – 204k
- Citi – 171k
Stats & Impressions
My most-visited airport was JFK, which I either departed from or arrived at a whopping 17 times. Second most-visited was SJU at 5.
Best airport – RDU Raleigh-Durham. Moderately sized, new, fresh, lots of unique shops and good restaurants. Honorable mention DCA.
Worst airport – PIT Pittsburgh. The hot pretzel and mustard I had there was soul-nourishing. But everything else was depressing. Sorry PIT.
Shortest flight – SJU San Juan to STT St. Thomas: 68 miles.
Longest flight – Dublin to JFK: 3,179 miles. Lay-flat is always nice, and the taste of the food in Mint is a highlight. I will say that the overall business experience on the A321 isn’t as memorable on as those on a wide body, though.
Total distance flown – my 36 flights covered over 23,000 nautical miles!
The New York advantage – within 1.5 hours of where I live there are (4) JetBlue destinations – HPN, LGA, JFK, and EWR. This is a huge advantage being able to collect multiple destinations on the return legs. The only downside is the driving and parking challenges to get to JFK. Worst part of the endeavor, hands down.
JFK Terminal 5 – best food option is Lucy’s Asian Kitchen, in the main food court area. We get the General Tso’s Chicken and Wonton soup – amazing!
Lounges – we have AMEX Centurion and Chase Sapphire Lounge access, but neither of those are in JetBlue JFK Terminal 5, where we spent most of our time. There is however a GameWay lounge there. You can use your Priority Pass** to get either a non-alcoholic drink and a snack, or just an alcoholic drink. It’s nothing special, but it’s something. I guess you could also play video games there….but alas, I don’t think I know how to anymore.
**GameWay does not accept AMEX Priority Pass, so we used a Priority Pass from the Chase Ritz Carlton card.
JetBlue Mint – in case you’re interested, the flights to Dublin were booked using AMEX transfers to Qatar on the outbound, and AMEX to Etihad on the return. Both were able to capture a 20% transfer bonus. See this post, point 3 for how that works.
That many flights sounds brutal?
It may seem that way, but I never felt it was too much. The airport and airplane experiences were overall very positive. I had enough legroom, inflight entertainment, wifi, and bags of plantain chips to keep me happy. Being high above the earth, in the clouds, is calming. Doing it with a travel buddy (who always has alcohol wipes for the seats and surfaces!) is also much better than shlepping it alone.
We generally didn’t try to kill ourselves with an insane pace, but when there was only a few weekends remaining in the year, we had to ramp it up. Between general holiday travel, and the likelihood of northeast winter weather wreaking havoc on plans, we ended up with two different days with 5 segments each, which was our highest:
On 11/22, we did:
- JFK-ROC (departing at 7:45 am)
- ROC-JFK
- JFK-SYR
- SYR-JFK
- JFK-RDU (landing at 4:35 pm)
On 12/05, we did:
- JFK-BUF (departing at 8:04 am)
- BUF-JFK
- JFK-ATL
- ATL-JFK
- JFK-PVD (landing at 10:37 pm)
On that long day 12/05, my wife joined me for the first flight to Buffalo and back to JFK. At that point, she had her 20 airports, and so she triumphantly bowed out of the remainder, while I continued on to 25. We decided that since we will almost always be flying together, and my status will extend to her, there wasn’t a need to have her also push to 25.
Cool stuff
Threw in a train
Because of JetBlue’s route network, basically all flights either depart from or fly to JFK, BOS, FLL, or SJU. When I found myself in Providence PVD, the only JetBlue outbound from there was back to JFK. So the next morning I opted to take a 2-hour train to Boston. By positioning myself to BOS, I would have access to all of that larger hub’s destination options. This reduced the “take 2 flights, count 1” cycle that anyone who did this challenge likely found themselves in towards the end when unique destinations were drying up.
On the subject of trains, we also decided to try public transportation from Sloatsburg, NY to JFK. This was a 4-train, 2 hours and 33 minute bloodbath that, while successful, is not an experience I’d wish on my worst enemy.
In and out
Inspired by Frequent Miler’s post, my first same-day turn was from SJU San Juan to STT St. Thomas. The same aircraft that landed in St. Thomas would turn around and fly back to San Juan 33 minutes later. As the article warned, St. Thomas is a US Territory, but it is not a part of the customs territory of the US. This means I would have to deplane, clear customs and re-clear TSA. It took me 19 minutes to get off the plane, exit the secure area, and get back through security and to the boarding line. I was stressing a bit, but due to a boarding delay, ended up with about 20 extra minutes to spare. Worth it to pick up the quick airport!
Status match to JetBlue Mosaic
We began this challenge by status-matching my wife’s AA Gold status to JetBlue’s Mosaic 1. This promotional 3-month offer made all of our initial flights a nice preview of the status we would earn at the end of the challenge. Priority boarding, extra leg-room seats up front, better snack offerings, and free drinks were the main draws. One gets accustomed to such treatment, so it hurt a bit when halfway through the challenge, the status match ran out, and we lost the perks. (Side note – the flights we booked via AMEX travel counted towards JetBlue loyalty because they show up as cash bookings, whereas the flights booked with JetBlue miles do not).
Another benefit of Mosaic status is the “free same day change” which we used a few times. This allows you to book the cheapest flight on a particular day, whether using points or cash, even if it’s not your desired time. Once it’s 24 hours before that scheduled flight, you can, for no charge, change from that flight to your more desired flight, as long as there’s space on that flight. Effectively booking the most expensive flight for the cheapest price. This does take things down to the wire if you have other people involved in taking you to the airport or picking you up, so we used it sparingly.
Traveling light
We never checked bags. And, on those crammed weekends with many segments, we only flew with a backpack that could fit under the seat in front of us. Since we often had tight connections, there was a chance that we would reach a boarding gate after everyone was already boarded and the overhead bins were full. If we had a roller-board carryon and needed to check it, that extra time at the next destination to retrieve it at baggage claim could make us miss the rest of the party that day. This is the bag I used – love it.
Travel Delays
Generally, we had great fortune in avoiding massive delays and cancellations. Considering many of the flights were unrelated itineraries – a one-way flight to a city, and then a separate one-way flight from that same city an hour later – even small delays could have been catastrophic. Our one mishap was when flying home from the Bahamas NAS-FLL-LGA. Our NAS-FLL leg was fine, and even the start of FLL-LGA was fine. We boarded the plane in FLL on time, were seated, but then never took off. Due to an odor, we were asked to de-plane. Apparently it was pretty bad towards the middle of the plane. We de-planed at about 8pm, and the next 4+ hours in the terminal were a series of announcements about attempts to get another aircraft, then we got another aircraft but were waiting on crew. Ultimately, just after midnight, the flight to LGA was canceled.
Seeing the writing on the wall, I had already booked the first flight out of FLL the next morning. (slick!) That early flight quickly sold out after I booked it, leaving the other passengers to wait around longer the next day before getting home. However, because I had booked my own alternate flight, I didn’t go to the JetBlue desk like all the other passengers, thinking there was nothing they could do. It was past midnight, our rebooked flight was in 6 hours, should we bother trying for a hotel? As it turns out, we could have gone to the JetBlue desk and they would have given us a hotel. Even 4 hours there would have been better than the airport floor I slept on (not slick!). I later called JetBlue and they refunded the cash equivalent of the miles we spent for the entire route home from Nassau, including the Nassau to FLL leg that we did fly.
Other thoughts
Going out of our way
How much did we go out of our way to do this? I mentioned we already had some travel plans when the promotion began, and other travel needs came up during. That said, we definitely went out of our way to make connections when we didn’t need to, and at the end devoted 3 different weekends to collecting the rest of the destinations we needed. Out of my 25 destinations, I attribute 11 to actual travel needs, including some deliberate inefficiencies regarding airport choices. The remaining 14 destinations were absolutely only flown for this challenge. That nets to 580,000 miles spent on pre-planned travel, (including the heavily weighted Dublin flights) and 304,000 due to the promotion.
The planning
The real work began when we were reaching the end of October and the last of our “organic” flight needs. I had 15, my wife had 14, with ~2 months to go. I dove hard into the planning of JetBlue’s route network, which I ended up really enjoying. Essentially, the mission was to piece together a string of one-way flights, from Friday or Saturday to Sunday, all using JFK as a hub, with minimal connection time at each airport. I prioritized short domestic flights, trying to hit all the airports closest to New York before branching slightly further out, like to Atlanta. On many routes, the same aircraft went out and back. This means that small delays weren’t really risks – you weren’t going to miss your tight connection since the departing flight is the same aircraft you’re arriving in on. If the inbound was delayed, the outbound would be commensurately delayed. One time, I flew (4) segments: from JFK to Buffalo to JFK to Atlanta to JFK all on the same aircraft. Just kept getting off, and getting right back on. The flight attendants started to recognize me. That particular day I actually flew one more flight than the crew, since I continued on to Providence after landing in JFK, while they were done for the day in JFK.
Clearing customs at an international location was a time investment that I determined wasn’t worth it for this challenge. For that reason we only ended up going to 1 international airport outside of Dublin, which was Nassau. Predictably, it took over 60 minutes to clear customs in the Bahamas. We stayed the night there so it wasn’t an impact, just a confirmation of my initial thought to avoid. Cancun was a temptation, being only a 60+ minute flight from FLL, and the route was actually on sale (mistake fare?) for 200 points (not dollars, points!) Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t the right time for Cancun, or any of the Dominican Republic options either.
Search tools
To search, I used a combination of:
- seats.aero – my favorite award search tool, and the place I’m probably searching if you ask me for help with award flights. That’s my referral code if you decide to try it!
- JetBlue’s own site/app
- Google Flights
- https://www.flightsfrom.com – this was a new one to me. This allowed me to know on what day of the week and what time range of the day, a JetBlue flight departs an airport I was considering going to.
JetBlue as an airline
Love it. Will definitely choose JetBlue over other options going forward, all else being equal. They serve where we frequently fly, we have a stash of miles, the in-air product is good, and the status definitely makes the flying experience better. But, flight schedules do ultimately drive our selection. Case in point, in the months since we finished this challenge, we’ve taken 2 round trips – one we flew Southwest, and the other AA. So, we aren’t exclusive to one airline. The biggest perk of all this might end up being the reciprocal status benefits when flying United, once that Blue Sky linking is ready! United’s hub in Newark is probably the most convenient major airport for us to get to, so that could be very nice! The only drawback of JetBlue is….getting to JFK.
Final thoughts: JetBlue 25 for 25
Health and circumstances
As my legs covered long distances in the terminals, overnight bag strapped securely to my back, my mind and fingers navigating the many iPhone apps and display board updates, weighing the lounge options, and sorting through all the other swirling information, I was appreciative that I was healthy, mobile, and able to do something like this. I did put in the work to obtain the credit card savvy and airline knowledge, but I only have so much control over my health. A reminder of this was the long line of passengers in wheelchairs pre-boarding each flight. Then when deboarding each flight, being greeted by the lineup of airport staff waiting with wheelchairs at the jetway. That lineup seemed to grow with each flight we took. What for so many was a trying ordeal to take one single flight, for me was a fun pasttime that I did over 25 times. So I am grateful for my health, and for the support of my wife along the way! Maybe we’ll take a trip to one of JetBlue’s 20 Caribbean destinations to celebrate….what do you think?!